Recurve – Gigaomhttps://gigaom.com
The industry leader in emerging technology researchMon, 25 Sep 2017 15:05:19 +0000en-UShourly1Building Energy Efficiency Is a Hard Market to Crackhttps://gigaom.com/2011/04/04/building-energy-efficiency-is-a-hard-market-to-crack/
https://gigaom.com/2011/04/04/building-energy-efficiency-is-a-hard-market-to-crack/#commentsMon, 04 Apr 2011 07:00:06 +0000http://gigaom.com/?p=324903It’s a cliché you inevitably hear in any discussion about building energy efficiency retrofits: It’s the “low-hanging fruit” of cleantech. Apparently, however, it’s not low enough, because the market hasn’t exactly taken off. The residential market in particular has been tough because the spending on energy efficiency projects tends to be low, and the returns on investments for service providers can be lengthy.

“The average resident nationwide pays $1,200 a year in utility costs. My cost of acquiring that consumer may be $2,000, and that would be cheap. It’ll be 10 years before anyone can extract money out of that thing. It’s a really hard market to crack,” said Kevin Surace, CEO of energy efficiency building product provider Serious Materials during a panel at the SolarTech conference last week.

Although steps such as insulating the roof, sealing air ducts and installing windows that minimize heat loss usually cost less than, say, erecting a solar electric system on the roof, they are still pricey enough to give homeowners pause, especially when the economy is recovering.

San Francisco-based Recurve, which raised at least $14 million in venture capital, has moved out of the energy auditing business to focus on developing and selling software to help energy auditors determine the most cost-efficient energy efficiency measures for their customers.

Federal Help

Federal, state and even local incentive programs are available for home energy retrofits, but consumers still need to fork over a big chunk of the cost. A solid energy audit should include a blower door test to gauge how airtight a home is. But the test costs from $800 to $1,000, which prolongs the time it will take the homeowners to recoup the investment, if they do at all, Surace noted.

A financing model called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), which allows homeowners to pay their retrofits as part of their property tax payments over time, promised to make energy efficiency measures more affordable. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac opposed such a financing model because tax payment becomes senior to home mortgages. That means if a homeowner defaults, the homeowner will have to pay back the PACE debt first before the mortgage.

The White House and the Department of Energy promised to work on alternative plans and proposed last November to work with banks to come up with low-interest loans to help finance energy retrofits. The DOE also launched a pilot project called Home Energy Score to standardize how energy auditors do their work and present data to consumers. The idea is to make it easier for consumers to understand the energy audit process and pick credible companies to do the audits and upgrades. The inspiration for Home Energy Score came from the Energy Star program for appliances or fuel economy labels for cars.

The Commercial Market

The commercial sector might be a more lucrative space for energy retrofit providers, Surace said. Businesses tend to use energy more intensely and pay more attention to ways to cut energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint. Their retrofit projects also can be larger, and that could attract more lenders.

Until now, a bulk of energy retrofit projects in the commercial space take place in public facilities, such as government buildings, colleges and hospitals, Peter Larsen, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told me. The lab has tracked the energy service market for over 15 years and built up a database of about 3,500 projects.

Public agencies tend to have buildings with outdated wiring and other equipment that could use some modernization, and they have the money to do it. Private businesses, however, are much more tight-fisted with their money and tend to carry out smaller retrofit projects and expect a much quicker payback to please their shareholders, Larsen said.

The commercial market has been dominated by long-time players such as Johnson Controls (s JCI) and Honeywell (s HON), which guarantee energy savings and line up banks to finance the projects, or pay for the projects themselves. New entrants have come in to compete for this market; Metrus Energy, founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, won BAE Systems as its first customer and is doing a second project for the defense contractor.

Surace and others on the panel said commercial energy retrofits currently can take a few years to plan and finance. New business models that can deliver the projects more quickly and efficiently are needed to lure more business customers. During the panel discussion at SolarTech, Matt Cheney, CEO of Cleanpath Ventures, which finances renewable energy projects, said he saw a good fit between real estate companies and energy efficiency services. Derrick Rebello, CEO of Quantum Energy Services & Technologies, would like to see utilities involved to help finance energy retrofits. Some states have regulations that reward utilities for energy conservation efforts.

]]>https://gigaom.com/2011/04/04/building-energy-efficiency-is-a-hard-market-to-crack/feed/4Recurve Raises $8M for Home Energy Auditshttps://gigaom.com/2010/06/17/recurve-raises-8m-for-home-energy-audits/
https://gigaom.com/2010/06/17/recurve-raises-8m-for-home-energy-audits/#commentsThu, 17 Jun 2010 15:41:49 +0000http://earth2tech.com/?p=60059Recurve, the startup that has built a business off of auditing homes for energy efficiency, has raised $8 million of a planned $9 million round, according to filings. Formerly called Sustainable Spaces, the company has a real knack for being able to help usher in legislation that creates incentives around home energy audits. (See Recurve President and Founder Matt Golden’s support for the Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this year, which would invest $6 billion over two years in helping homeowners save money on their energy bills).

But the secret sauce behind Recurve is actually its smart software that enables auditors and contractors to determine the best and most cost-effective audits (like better insulation and more-efficient heating and cooling systems) which can reduce the time an audit takes. Its web-based software also keeps home owners engaged in the process. The company released the latest beta version of its contractor software in April.

As Golden has told me before, the heating, cooling and lighting of houses is responsible for a little under a quarter of the carbon emissions in the U.S., and leaky heating and cooling ducts could account for as much as 2 to 3 percent of electricity used in the U.S. Recurve says its audits can reduce an existing home’s energy expenditure by somewhere between 10 to 50 percent.

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]]>https://gigaom.com/2010/06/17/recurve-raises-8m-for-home-energy-audits/feed/2OPINION: Home Star, A Smart Investment in Jobs, Innovationhttps://gigaom.com/2010/05/16/opinion-home-star-a-smart-investment-in-jobs-innovation/
https://gigaom.com/2010/05/16/opinion-home-star-a-smart-investment-in-jobs-innovation/#commentsMon, 17 May 2010 02:00:22 +0000http://earth2tech.com/?p=57892The Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010 passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month authorizes the creation of a national incentive program (informally known as “Cash for Caulkers”) that would invest $6 billion over two years in helping homeowners save money on their energy bills, while reducing household carbon emissions and scaling back our dependence on foreign oil. But there’s more to it than that.

For hundreds of thousands of American construction and manufacturing workers who have been sidelined by the recession, the proposed Home Star program – which now awaits Senate approval – represents a lifeline to good jobs with living wages in a growing 21st-century industry.

While much of our economy appears to be on the road to recovery, the outlook for American construction workers is truly grim. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 2 million construction jobs dried up between December 2007 and January 2010, leaving around one in five experienced construction workers unemployed. And with demand for new buildings stalled at historically low levels, there’s little hope that these workers will be rehired in traditional construction jobs any time soon.

The ongoing crisis in the construction industry has hit the manufacturing and retail sectors as well. Statistical analysis produced by the Home Performance Resource Center, a nonprofit industry research group, shows that factories involved in the production of building materials, heating and cooling equipment and household appliances are operating at around 30 to 50 percent below capacity, with a similarly bleak outlook for near-term growth. In addition, for most categories, more than 90 percent of manufacturing is domestic.

The good news is that by stimulating consumer demand for energy retrofits, Home Star would leverage private investment to create an estimated 168,000 local jobs in construction and related industries within two years – jobs that cannot be outsourced overseas. Furthermore, the replacement windows, sheet metal, HVAC equipment and other materials used in home energy remodeling are overwhelmingly produced by American mills and factories, so the work would provide a shot in the arm for our manufacturing and retail sectors as well.

If enacted, the Home Star program will provide two very different kinds of consumer incentives. If you’ve ever received a rebate for buying an energy-efficient refrigerator or water heater, you’re already familiar with what the legislation called the Silver Star incentive path. This component of the program would reimburse homeowners up to $3,000 for a variety of products and home improvements, including insulation, air sealing, duct sealing, or replacing old furnaces and air conditioners with new high-efficiency models.

The performance-based Gold Star path, on the other hand, represents the future of residential energy management, leveraging state-of-the-art building science methods to identify sources of energy waste and then reward homeowners for implementing the most cost-effective remediation measures available.

Unlike the Silver Star path, Gold Star rebates are based on modeled energy savings as determined by scientific evaluation of a home’s pre-retrofit energy performance and computer simulation of energy use after the retrofit. This approach gives homeowners and their contractors the freedom to select any combination of home improvement measures that will achieve the desired results. Homeowners who opt for the Gold Star path would receive a $3,000 rebate for predicted energy savings of 20 percent, plus an additional $1,000 for each additional 5 percent of energy savings up to a cap of 50 percent of the overall project cost.

The potential impact of the Gold Star model is huge. While the Silver Star path is designed for rapid deployment and job creation in today’s market, Gold Star will enable a different set of market forces and shift our attention away from the prescriptive policies that have been used in the past. Placing a clear economic value on energy saved rather than on specific products or technologies will drive innovation, and lead us towards a market based, and highly economically efficient, model that can continue to scale into the future without the long-term need for government subsidies.

The combination of an industry that is capable of consistently delivering on predicted savings, coupled with a smart grid that will provide real energy pricing and transparency, will allow the energy efficiency industry to directly monetize energy savings on forward capacity markets and through ESCO relationships with our customers. Home Star represents an investment in the foundation of this future market.

Ultimately, we can achieve the greatest gains in energy efficiency and carbon abatement through a combination of technologies that work together – from improved insulation and air sealing to more efficient appliances and HVAC equipment to on-site power generation and smart grid systems that will enable utilities and homeowners to manage energy use and reduce peak demand. Gold Star is good first step toward that goal.

Although Home Star has been authorized by the House of Representatives, the program still needs Senate approval and an appropriations bill to provide funding before the bill can be signed into law. For the legions of unemployed Americans who have lost jobs in construction and related industries, there’s not a moment to lose.

Matt Golden is the founder and president of San Francisco-based Recurve Inc. (Formerly Sustainable Spaces), and policy chair of Efficiency First, a national trade association representing home energy contractors and related businesses. More information about the proposed Home Star program is available at www.homestarcoalition.org.

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Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:06:21 +0000http://newteevee.com/?p=45717Los Angeles-based social video start-up Qlipso has bought the assets of San Diego-based video sharing site Veoh, according to a report from Socaltech.com. Veoh’s web site already reflects the change of ownership, stating: “Now part of qlipso, so you can share the fun!” Details of the transaction have not been revealed, and Qlipso didn’t return a request for comment.

Veoh filed for bankruptcy in February. The site competed with YouTube (s GOOG) early on and raised more than $70 million in funding, but suffered from a number of strategic missteps along the way, including the focus on a desktop player and exorbitant spending of up to $4 million per month on staff and infrastructure. A copyright infringement lawsuit brought against it by the Universal Music Group didn’t really help to turn things around, either.

Qlipso offers users the ability to combine web videos and other media assets to playlists, personalize these playlists with 3-D avatars and share them in a live web chat. The company has apparently gone through a number of iterations and was previously also know as Icontaqt, 2Peer and Playr. It is backed by Jerusalem Venture Partners and led by CEO Jon Goldman, who previously co-founded the video game developer Foundation 9 Entertainment.

]]>“Cash for Caulkers” Could Deliver $23B for Home Energy Efficiencyhttps://gigaom.com/2009/11/18/%e2%80%9ccash-for-caulkers%e2%80%9d-could-deliver-23b-for-home-energy-efficiency/
https://gigaom.com/2009/11/18/%e2%80%9ccash-for-caulkers%e2%80%9d-could-deliver-23b-for-home-energy-efficiency/#commentsWed, 18 Nov 2009 17:58:44 +0000http://earth2tech.com/?p=45717Step aside “Cash for Clunkers,” and make way for “Cash for Caulkers.” The White House is reportedly considering rolling out a two-year, $23 billion program to encourage homeowners to undertake weatherization projects such as adding air sealing, insulation and energy-saving light bulbs. The program would be called Home Star -– playing off the name Energy Star, the Environmental Protection Agency’s widely recognized energy efficiency program. The New York Times, in a story published last night, reported Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, as saying that it’s one of the “top things he’s looking at.”

Here’s the gist of the proposed program, as outlined by The New York Times:

$6 billion would be set aside for people who undertook at least two weatherization projects, like the air sealing or insulation previously mentioned. There would be a list of some 10 eligible projects, and households that completed at least two of them would be eligible for up to $2,000 in subsidies; four projects would yield up to $3,500. But the government money could not pay for more than half of any project.

$12 billion would go to incentivize households that did weatherization projects that reduced energy use by at least 20 percent, which would bring in a $4,000 subsidy. There would be $1,500 more available for each additional 5 percent reduction achieved by an energy retrofit, and government money could pay for no more than half the cost of the project. Matt Golden, president of San Francisco-based energy retrofitter Recurve (formerly Sustainable Spaces), tells us that an energy retrofit costing between $4,000 and $6,000 could typically reduce a home’s energy use by 20 percent, though the price tag is highly dependent on the condition of the house and its location.

$2 billion would go toward auditing a portion of the projects to ensure they did what they were supposed to do.

$3 billion would pay to incentivize retailers like Home Depot and building contractors. Few details were given about this pot of money, but it sounds like it would be used to encourage these companies to embrace the program. Home Depot, say, might designate a portion of its store for Home Star upgrades with Home Star representatives on hand to help customers.

The home energy retrofit industry is unsurprisingly head-over-heels in love with this program. Efficiency First, a trade association for the industry, says it would support 5.9 million home energy retrofits and create more than 500,000 new jobs. The association didn’t say if this job creation number accounts for those lost as a result of the increased taxes needed to support Home Star, however. Efficiency First estimates that energy improvements covered by Home Star could reduce “energy waste” in most home by 20-40 percent and, if combined with low-interest financing, could be cash-flow positive once the projects were completed.

Word that Home Star appears to be coalescing into a serious policy proposal comes about a month after the White House unveiled its strategy for bolstering a “self-sustaining” home energy retrofit industry. That strategy included developing home energy performance labels, supporting municipal financing of projects and energy-efficient mortgages, and developing workforce certification and training standards. Home Star would provide a financial kick in the pants and would likely gel nicely with the policy-oriented proposals previously outlined by the White House.

Silicon Valley, it should be said, has its hands all over Home Star, and certainly stands to gain from the billions of dollars that could go toward weatherization projects. John Doerr, of venture firm Kleiner Perkins and a member of President Obama’s board of outside economic advisers, has been pushing the program in Washington, D.C., as has Recurve’s Matt Golden, who is also the national chairman of Efficiency First. Doerr told The New York Times that he has no stake in any weatherization company, though Golden certainly does.

Still, the program has merits. Leaky homes are perhaps the lowest-hanging of all low-hanging fruit, so any government program meant to reduce energy use and create jobs should be looking towards home energy retrofits. The real question is if government should be inserting its nose so deeply into this nascent industry.